So I had a quick turn around assignment (9 full days) for a viking who makes mead for his area and is a well respected artisan. I contemplated making him a paper scroll that looked like a rune stone, but decided in the time available I couldn’t do that justice. So I started contemplating a real runestone, perhaps made of a plaque of wood.

Then I went to Panteria. First thing Saturday morning I went wandering around the merchants just to see who was selling what. I came across a group selling all sorts of cups and feast gear named Plunder Sisters. There I found a simple turned cup that looked like it was newly made out of perhaps pine. The grain was nice and the workmanship good and it was about the right size for the scroll. I purchased the cup and put it in my bag. Now to design the scroll!

My fellow scribal buddies and I sat around in the dark discussing words and design ideas. Ring givers, mead maker.. gods, mead, mead of poetry… there may have been some mead drinking involved too. The next morning I went back to the merchant to get the details of the maker and it turns out the maker is a guy named Alistair and it was his first event, and first sale! Perfect.

Once home and in possession of an internet connection that could handle pictures I started looking up various runestones and other viking images in art concerning mead making. I quickly found an interesting image of a ritual concerning mead making that would work http://www.medievalists.net/2015/01/ceremonial-drinking-viking-age/

Wikipedia has a nice high resolution version of the picture –

I took the central image from here and wrote out text that is based on the runestone inscriptions that have been found in similar locations. They are nearly always short and to the point. My wordsmith, Aesa feilinn Jossursdottir based the words on the Risbyle Runestones found near the western shore of Lake Vallentunasjön in Uppland, Sweden, dating from the Viking Age. I then asked Ávaldr Valbjarnarson to translate this into runes.

I had initially planned to paint the cup, but then I wasn’t sure if the paint and tung oil finish would play nice together, so since I didn’t have a lot of time to experiment (we’re at 2 full days now) I decided it was safest to inscribe using my hand chisels.

I rubbed it with two coats of tung oil finish and rushed it off the courier who was going down to the event, with about an hour to spare!

If anyone knows how to get in touch with Alistair from Plunder Sisters, I’d love to send him a link to this so he can see how it turned out.